


winter followed us home

by perennials



Category: Given (Manga)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Lists, M/M, Post-Canon, guitar metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 06:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20326561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: Ten things Uenoyama gives Mafuyu.Another set of strings. A different brand, expensive, unfamiliar. The first thing he sees when he runs into the music store, wild-eyed and frantic like he’s never broken the strings of a guitar before. He makes it back to the live house with scant minutes to spare, and you hold out your guitar with a blank, helpless expression, pleading with him not to be disappointed in you. To no one’s surprise but yours, he’s not.





	winter followed us home

**Author's Note:**

> second person pov in 2019? more likely than you think

I plant my hands in the garden soil—  
I will sprout,  
I know, I know, I know.  
And in the hollow of my ink-stained palms  
swallows will make their nest.

one.

New strings. Plated with tin and made of high carbon. Sturdy enough to last you several months. You’ve never seen guitar strings like this before, coiled in a flat plastic package with a slit at the back for opening up, cut away from the body of a guitar like a wound. It’s fascinating. He snips the old ones from your dead boyfriend’s Gibson with blue wire clippers and then restrings it with the new set, working with a familiarity and ease that seems out of place on his sixteen-year-old shoulders. You want to ask why he is so good at this whole business of fixing and renewing and rescuing, but his eyebrows are pinched and his fringe is falling over his face, hiding the rest of his expression from you. It feels oddly intimate. When he’s done with everything he stops and smiles to himself secretly as if he’s forgotten you’re there at all, and then he shifts his hand over the strings, and plays a chord. Your dead boyfriend’s guitar makes a sound you thought you’d never hear again in your life, and somewhere deep inside of you, you feel something click gently back into place.

two.

A guitar pick. Hard plastic and translucent with a turquoise sheen. Plain, no logo. Two months after your first encounter on the staircase behind the gymnasium you lose your pick at the studio and can’t find the time to go buy a new one, so you end up strumming the strings with your fingernails until the skin underneath is raw and shiny. On Friday in the studio he throws the pick at your head and misses on purpose. He’s looking at your hands. You could’ve just asked me, he says, scowling. You’re a part of this band as much as the rest of us. Get it into your damn skull. It’s only been two months since he fixed your dead boyfriend’s guitar for you and you’re not yet sure how to conduct yourself around him, how you can best insulate yourself from his passion. You are not scared of him, only of what he could put you through again. You’ve lived through so much already.

three.

Another set of strings. A different brand, expensive, unfamiliar. The first thing he sees when he runs into the music store, wild-eyed and frantic like he’s never broken the strings of a guitar before. He makes it back to the live house with scant minutes to spare, and you hold out your guitar with a blank, helpless expression, pleading with him not to be disappointed in you. To no one’s surprise but yours, he’s not. He restrings your dead boyfriend’s guitar for the second time in months, and within seconds you're ushered onto the stage, clutching the last thing you stole from winter. The business with fixing and renewing and salvaging. One day you’re going to have to ask him how he does it. For now, you take a deep breath, and open your mouth.

four.

A kiss. Clumsy, more teeth than lips. Now that you’ve known him for this long you can safely say it is impulsive, too, a spur of the moment decision he probably made with the half of his heart folded into the wood of his guitar before the rest of him could catch up and, panicking, tell him not to kiss his band mate, on stage, with all the lights still shining on their faces. You’re both sweaty and dizzy and his mouth tastes like salt from the sea. Still reeling from the aftermath of the last three minutes, he hugs you, hard, and then gently pushes you off the stage. You’re left standing in the wings, watching his profile through the dark blue curtains as he tears the stage up with claws and passion and beauty. You should have known that you would not be able to hide from such senseless, kind destruction. It is not winter anymore.

five.

Lunch set B. A fish burger and medium fries, and orange juice in a plastic cup. A sad-looking salad with sesame sauce that comes in a separate packet and costs you an extra seventy yen. You tell him you’re not that hungry and might not be able to finish everything, but he grins at you and says that it’s fine, since it’s his treat anyway. He talks about the new song he’s working on while you tear the paper wrapping off your straw and gingerly stick it into your juice, hands held out in front of him like birds while he takes you animatedly through the sequence he wants to use for the intro, and how he thinks Kaji’s drumming will compliment it perfectly. You’ve been playing the guitar for long enough now that you can appreciate the sheer artistry of his work. His music possesses a sharpness that reminds you of grainy old movies from the 1990s where the characters go on a road trip across America. There’s dust and deserts and a pit stop in the middle of nowhere with a barely-working electric fan inside. Dry nights and hot afternoons. Rough sex in the backseat and long conversations on the hood of the car at two in the morning, the night spread out above your heads like a blanket inlaid with delicate gold sequins. He plays you a recording of the lead-up to the chorus, leaning over his half-eaten burger so the music stays trapped between the two of you only. You close your eyes and think about how you want to sing this song.

six.

A wristwatch. Vibrantly orange with black highlights. Solar-powered, so you’ll never have to worry about changing the batteries, and waterproof, in case you decide to take him into the ocean one day instead of the edge of the beach. More expensive than you would have expected, for the time and the occasion and your small, eighteen-year-old hands, the way you carry silence and history alike in your pockets. You’ve never been the sort to wear watches. You’re forgetful and a daydreamer and you have a problem with committing to things. Plus, watches get caught on the sleeves of your jacket and you have to either hide them away underneath, which defeats the purpose of wearing a watch at all, or roll the sleeve up over it, which looks weird. He tells you how he walked past it in a storefront display a while back and thought of you instantly. You ask him why. Because it looked cool, he says, and touches your face with the back of his hand. That’s lame, you respond, and press your lips to his skin, smiling a little.

seven.

A mechanical pencil. Slim-barreled and fancy, with the kind of grip that gets its own advertisement page in a magazine and parents flock to when looking for superficial ways to improve their child’s schooling experience, not yet knowing that the crux of happiness lies in the heart, not the contents of their child’s pencil case. Pink. He gives it to you as a good luck charm the day before your college entrance exams, standing in your doorway and peering over your shoulder every few seconds in case your mother walks by and decides to come say hello. He is fiercely aware of the burden on his shoulders, the dead boy that once walked into this apartment and then left his mark on it forever. Once, it had bothered him enough that the two of you fought over it, a cruel three-day affair that sent you to Kaji and him running off to Haruki for life advice and rolled dumplings, while the band’s LINE chat plummeted into silence. After eating enough fried rice to ensure that you would not be seeking it out for the next four years, you turned on your phone to an apology and an invitation to the family restaurant that you used to frequent back in your second year of high school. He voiced his insecurities and fears and the stuff he thought about when you were not around, how he saw your dead boyfriend’s face in your eyes sometimes and it frightened him. You told him that you had made peace with the past, because that was all that you could say without lying to him and yourself and the memory of winter. He accepted that, as he accepted everything you gave him, and later when you let him touch you, in his bedroom with the curtains drawn and the lights dimmed, you were finally able to admit to yourself that you had missed him terribly after all. Today you take the pencil from his outstretched hands and kiss the space between his eyes. You say: thank you.

eight.

Three apologies. In quick, machine gun succession, so that you are unable to cut in at any point and stop the flurry of honesty and bullet wounds. Slurred, from a lack of sleep. He’s upset, and so are you, which is why he’s doing this, you suspect; he’s always been the sort to demonstrate his frustration to strangers and friends alike, never afraid that they might grow to dislike him for his human tendencies, while all your life you’ve settled for locked bathrooms and movie marathons. You ended up passing your entrance exams on your first try, and so did he, only you’re staying in the city while he’s going to a university that’s several cities away, distant enough that you would not be able to reach him by daybreak if you had a bad dream in the night and wanted to touch his face, his hands. In the two years you spent with the band his growth had exceeded even Kaji’s sly calculations, and his music has summoned its own gods now, deserving of a place on his left shoulder, where all talented musicians go to die. You are beginning to see why some people become afraid of the things that awe them. It will be good for his music, you are sure. He has told you about the university, their undergraduate program and the musicians that have fallen out of its gaping maw and left permanent marker hand prints on the ceiling of the world. Fukuoka is not close by any means, no matter how you try to spin the story of emotional distance which eclipses eight hour train rides, but his world has always been too loud for city streets and late night studio practices. You knew this from the moment he picked up a guitar and played it right across the fret board of your heart. You pinch his cheek even though you’re upset and tell him to stop apologizing. He knows what he’s doing, and you’re proud of that. Or at least you should be.

nine.

A can of coffee. Cold, because it’s the middle of summer. Wet, because it’s the middle of summer. He’s never forgotten about your dislike of fizzy drinks, and he watches you pull the tab as he sips at his coke, holding the can carefully with both hands. Your second year of university has ended and your days are filled with quiet afternoons and white noise. You’re part-timing again, this time as a vocalist for a band whose previous vocalist ran out on them after discovering he had accidentally fathered a child. You’re still playing the guitar. Meanwhile he’s acquired a piercing in one ear in his lifelong journey to become as cool as Kaji, and threaded a silver hoop through it. He tells you about his music, what he’s experimenting with and what he still sucks at, how the students in his faculty are loud and obnoxious and horribly inspiring like nothing he’s ever seen before. How he wants to make more music. You started this journey on a similar page but somewhere along the way you fell off the path you had beat out together and wound up as a biology major. The future is unclear and scares you somewhat to look at, the way you always want to check the bathtub behind the shower curtain at night to make sure there are no monsters, but part of you insists you should just walk away. Ignorance is a temporary reprise. For now, you welcome it. This time, he’s staying for two weeks. It feels too short but at the same time it’s far too long. His hair’s grown out and it tickles the collar of his shirt when he moves, curls around his ear and under his shiny silver earring. You wonder if you will grow too attached to him and end up not wanting him to leave again, and dismiss the thought, and two weeks later when you see him off outside the departure hall neither of you cries, but it takes every ounce of your willpower to let go of the sleeve of his shirt and watch him walk away without yelling something silly and impulsive that you will regret, like how you want to stick him in your water bottle like a genie and take him everywhere with you for the rest of your life. Like how you want him to stay. He’s barely left, but you miss him already.

ten.

Keys. One for the front door and another that unlocks the cabinet under the sink, which contains the world’s last hidden stash of toilet paper. New and untouched by any of the elements, strung together on a key ring with a mascot of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics attached. Your twenty-fourth birthday isn’t going to be here for another week, but he winds up at the front door of your apartment late one night, biting his lip so hard you worry that it will draw blood, and holds them out to you with a shaky hand. You had known that he had returned to Tokyo, but the exact details were uncertain and Kaji had not been enthusiastic about divulging any further information, only smiling cryptically at you over the rim of his glass while you frowned at him and made fun of his laugh lines. Now it makes sense, and all you really want to do is cry. But you have wanted to cry for a long time, since winter came and left you, and you have always hidden the urge well. You look up at him through your lashes, blinking stubbornly. What does this mean, you say, and your voice betrays you by catching on the last word but he shows no sign that he has noticed. He shrugs, stretches his arm out straighter, like the hand of a compass. Whatever you want it to mean, he says. You tell him that he still sucks at clear communication and he glares at you. God, okay, fine, he grinds out. These are the keys to my Tokyo apartment, which I am staying in, which I will be staying in for the rest of the unforeseen future. I’m saying I want to live with you, Mafuyu. Is that clear enough?

Somewhere deep inside of you, you feel something click gently back into place.

“Yes,” you tell him, quiet like you’re shouting through an ocean of glass, and then drag him back inside your apartment so you can press him up against the front door and slide your hands up his shirt and kiss him with a tenderness you thought you had long forgotten how to wield. It’s too late for him to go back to his apartment now. He will have to stay.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nikiforcvs) or [tumblr](http://corpsentry.tumblr.com/)
> 
> oh yes baby today i finished studying social science and now my prelims are still ON THEIR WAY but anyway i wrote this during my evening break which became my entire evening and the proof reading was done kind of sloppily so if it doesn't flow in some places-- you know why. today i planked, and now i feel very accomplished. i am caught up on things. been wanting to mess around with structures and framing so this is foray one, the other plan is to write a fic structured like a debate which we will see about  
thank you for reading, it's very cool of you. if you enjoyed this then that may be even cooler. it's almost halloween, can you believe it
> 
> have a good one


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